Book > Movie. Your wish list.

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What SF book would you like to see become a movie. Some great books have been so 'remasted' from Text to Film.

Example P K Dicks 'Do androids dream of electric sheep' > Bladerunner.

And funny enough. most of the best SF films are remakes of P K Dick.
For those not so 'into' sf.
Total Recall.
The Outsider.
Minority report.
Paycheck.
Are a few that spring to mind.
Also [and this is a thread in it'self] I suggest the Matrix had its roots in 'Maze 0f death'.

What books would i like to see made into movie format with all the whizbang CGI we now have.?
Well most are from my top 10.
Ringworld.
Radix.
Fall of chronopolis.
Consider Phlebas
But there are so many great stories.

'Raft' by Baxter would be a great movie.
Or if you want aliens and war. Startide Rising.
Or Fire appon the deep.

Be well

Prill

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@Hjarloprillar,

If they could do it right I would love to see Star Tide Rising made into a movie. But I suspect the SciFi hacks in Hollywood would just butcher it. And that would be painful to watch.

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i'd love to see a really good treatment of Gaiman's Sandman comic books

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@Hjarloprillar,

The Sparrow by Mary Doria Russell;
Revelation Space by Alastair Reynolds;

Ready Player One by Ersnt Cline is allegedly in the works but it might make a better miniseries then a feature length film.

Issac Asimov's Foundation NEEDS to be a fully fleshed out television series or at least a trilogy in the scope of the Lord of the Rings trilogy of films.

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@Hjarloprillar,

Here's another one that I think would make a wonderful movie (if they didn't butcher it)... Charles Stross' _Singularity Sky_, great stuff Smile

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@rosborne979,

Greg Bear's The Forge of God (1987) and Anvil of Stars (1992) would make a great duo of films.

No one's saying Ender's Game. It's getting a theatrical run in 2013 so in theory it's still can be canceled.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1731141/

The young actors already assigned to the role are pretty solid in the acting department though the assigned director is still questionable despite his Oscar win for Tsotsi (2005).

Is anyone interested in its film adaptation or has the shine from this once deemed classic been smudged off?

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@tsarstepan,

tsarstepan wrote:

Greg Bear's The Forge of God (1987)

Oh my god, I tried to read _The Forge of God_ years ago and couldn't even get through it. It was one of the few SciFi books I ever just set aside and gave up on. I think Greg Bear did _Blood Music_ which I liked, but his other stuff was too slow.

For giant space opera stuff like that, I prefer Gregory Benford _Tides of Light_ novels.

Enders Game is still a classic and I'll be happy that they try it in movie form, but I don't have much trust in Hollywood when it comes to turning books into Screenplays. The only time it seems to come out well is when the director or producer has a vested interest in the original story itself. _Alien_ and _Terminator_ are good examples of that.

Hollywood recently tried to turn _Jumper_ into a movie and they completely wrecked it. The book was absolutely fantastic, lightweight, imaginative and lively, but the movie somehow lost the fell of what personal teleportation would be like and what you could do with it. The book implied boundless freedom and possibilities for the characters, but the movie just lost itself in the standard hunter/prey conflict and special effects. Now it will probably never get done right and the possibility of that wonderful story being shown on screen has been lost.

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Hiero's Journey by Sterling E Lanier.

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@izzythepush,

izzythepush wrote:

Hiero's Journey by Sterling E Lanier.

Wow! an oldie but a goodie. I loved that book when I read it almost 30 years ago. Was the Morse (Moose-Horse) named Kluntz or something like that?

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After it's over, I'm looking forward to the movie about L. Ron Hubbards fake religion. Just waiting for the big Hari Selden-esque reveal to happen in real life first.

Ok, Ok.. How about a Rama series?

Also, Delaney's Dhalgren could look pretty post-modern apocalypotastic.

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@Eorl,

Rama would make a great low profile TV series. No studio would turn it into a series of films as there isn't enough action in the story to make the investment.

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@rosborne979,

Something like that, there was also a sequel, 'The Unforsaken Hiero.' Those a two books that are crying out to be filmed. It's one of the few pieces of writing where psychic combat actually feels real.

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@izzythepush,

izzythepush wrote:

Something like that, there was also a sequel, 'The Unforsaken Hiero.' Those a two books that are crying out to be filmed. It's one of the few pieces of writing where psychic combat actually feels real.

I read The Unforsaken Hiero as well, but didn't like it as much. I think sometimes a writer's personality changes over time and they lose the flavor of their original work (because something has changed in them). I also think that some books suffer from the same poison that kills a lot of movie sequels; pre-set expectations.

When a writer or film maker does something for the first time, it's often a free expression of something they feel strongly about. It's a story they want to tell with no boundaries or limitations. But when it's a sequel, especially when it's been a long time coming, it is limited by the environment created by its predecessor.

I'm hoping this is NOT the case with the upcoming Ridley Scott film, _Prometheus_, the only SciFi movie of any real substance that I see on the horizon at the moment.

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@rosborne979,

rosborne979 wrote:

[...the only SciFi movie of any real substance that I see on the horizon at the moment.

Robopocalypse is a Spielberg production that's scheduled for some time in 2013. I thought the book was a fun, fast read, although it's probably too tame for most of you hardcore SF fans Smile

The reviews for the book were kind of mixed...with some saying it was simply a knock-off of World War Z. I didn't think so, though.

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@Irishk,

Irishk wrote:

rosborne979 wrote:
[...the only SciFi movie of any real substance that I see on the horizon at the moment.
Robopocalypse is a Spielberg production that's scheduled for some time in 2013. I thought the book was a fun, fast read, although it's probably too tame for most of you hardcore SF fans

The book sounds good. Unfortunately Spielberg's treatment of SciFi is sometimes so cutsie that it makes me want to gag.

There's a lot of SciFi fluff out there. Hollywood seems to prefer to not take SciFi seriously. They either want to make it for kids or they want to turn it into Horror/Slasher type films. They can't seem to bring themselves to combine aliens and graphics and an actual story to go along with it.

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@tsarstepan,

tsarstepan wrote:

Rama would make a great low profile TV series. No studio would turn it into a series of films as there isn't enough action in the story to make the investment.

Agreed. And if I remember it well enough, the evenly slow release of surprises would lend it that "Lost" episodic mystery element we love in a good TV series.

1 Reply

@rosborne979,

rosborne979 wrote:

Hollywood seems to prefer to not take SciFi seriously. They either want to make it for kids or they want to turn it into Horror/Slasher type films. They can't seem to bring themselves to combine aliens and graphics and an actual story to go along with it.

True. For Prometheus, Ridley Scott requested a $250M budget and an 'R' rating from Fox, who were reluctant to sink that kind of money into something not 'PG13'. When he's done with post-production, he'll present a version of each for Fox to decide upon.

Oh - another one on the horizon (scheduled for 2013) is The Passage, Justin Cronin's novel. Ridley Scott won the bidding war on the movie rights when Cronin had only about a third of the novel completed. It's more SciFi/Fantasy, I guess, but I loved the book (don't judge lol) and I can't wait to see how he casts it. Zombies/vampires yay!

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@Eorl,

Eorl wrote:

tsarstepan wrote:

Rama would make a great low profile TV series. No studio would turn it into a series of films as there isn't enough action in the story to make the investment.

Agreed. And if I remember it well enough, the evenly slow release of surprises would lend it that "Lost" episodic mystery element we love in a good TV series.

oh yeah

i'd like to see a really god adaptation of Ursula LeGuin's, The Lathe of Heaven, also Jonathan Carroll's, The Land of Laughs

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